Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from and how did fingerboarding come into your life?

Hello 👋. My name is Toby, i was born in Wales and lived on a farm for the first few years of my life, we mostly kept horses and chickens. When i was four my parents divorced and moved back to where they were originally from in Sussex on the south coast of England.

I went school in a leafy town secondary school called Steyning, and when i was about 12yo TechDecks first appeared. Me and a few friends just instantly zoomed in on them. What I know about myself now, which I didn’t really then, is that I only ever really stick at things that I am kind of naturally good at – I hate steep learning curves. So fingerboarding or ‘TechDecking’ as we called it came so quickly to me.

TechDeck.com had a forum on it back then so once me and my friend Matt could do all the core tricks and grinds etc (which had ofc learned from THPS) we started making videos and uploading to the the TechDeck website – which suddenly made it feel like we had discovered something that could mean something to both us and people all around the world, if we kept pushing ourselves to be better and better!

Is skateboarding part of your life at all, and how does it relate to fingerboarding for you?

I LOVE skateboarding, but I am terrible at it. As I said, I can struggle with steep learning curves, so things like Ollies and Kickflips always seemed like things other people learned to do.

Whilst my friends were all skateboarding, I stuck with Rollerblades as all I had to learn to do was push and jump, and the rest was pretty interative from there. You just have to go faster than than you did last time, and then jump off/over something bigger than last time too!

When THPS arrived, that sucked me in and I fell in love with Rodney Mullen. And that pushed my rather limited skateboarding style into more freestyles tricks where i was using my hands alot, and using moves likes no-complys, sal flips, caspers and milkshakes to get the board off the ground and that openned up things to me.

All this led to me getting pretty heavily involved with a project to get a skatepark built in my village, which after years of campaigning and meeting with the council came true.

Now as an adult, I have continued that spirit into my proffesional life too. Alongside running my own busiesses, I have worked with various youth charities, and after a 7 year project with a local youthe centred, I was fortunate enough to be the Chairman of our cities biggest youth centre when saw through the development of brand new £8M building, which proudly boasts a 4000sqf skatepark in the roof!

Who were some of your earliest inspirations in skating or fingerboarding, and how did they influence your style?

As i say, Rodney Mullen was huge. I love pioneers. Whether it be music, film, art or sport – I am heavily attracted to the people who pushed the limits of their domain and made something new happen. And Rodney is one of the finest examples of that characteristic in skateboarding.

I grew up classic skateboard videos like Sorry and Rodney Vs Daewon, Yeah Right and Element world tour and stuff like that. So all those skaters like Kosten, Reynolds, Rowley, Appleyard and such were big windows for me into not was just what was possible on skateboard, but what I could learn to recreate at anytime I liked on my Fingerboards too!

Fingerboarding is a outlier to me in that respect. I have owned TechDecks for 20+ years, and they have been in anchor for me that ground me to the purist forms of focus, flow and meditation that I can get in life. But despite the industry/community of fingerboarding be what it is, I only really discovered within the last year. I can lived and played in a little bubble, where I though TechDecks were just a toy – but a toy that I had come to tech very seriously!

I bought my first wooden fingerboard around a year ago, after a friend of mine had got into it too and my world just started to explode with possibilty after that. Seeing all the people who were skating, filming, building parks and ramps. Building hyper realistic scenery and skateparks. It felt like coming home after 20 years and finding your parents had become millionaires – because there was SO MUCH to see and experience and become now.

So my early inspiration, such as Rodney, and the other greats from THPS and the skate videos at that time, taught me about flippiing in and out of grinds and slides. I could also do all the freestyle stuff like casper/primo/truckstand and ofc darkslides on the TeckDeck (which are oddly really hard on a wooden fb, but really easy on a TechDeck).

I love tailslides and noseslides, and getting great flips in and out of those. It very much captures that street/ledge skating culture that I’ve learned to love so much too. I think ledge skating is kinda the ultimate version of turning nothing into something – and that much like the leaning into thing I am naturally good at – kinda says a lot about who I am, how i work and how i build my businesses now as a adult.

What was your first setup like, and what companies or riders stood out to you at the time?

Geeze. I think it was a World Industries TechDeck. And I still have it now! I love collecting vintage and rare old TechDecks, i have loads and I always scoop up good finds on Vinted and Marketplace when i see them – people just seemed to get rid of them thinking they are old toys – but to me they are so much more!

My mum recently moved house and she asked me to come clear out all my old stuff from the loft. I was SO happy to find a stash of my old TechDecks from when i was a kid. All my old Birdhouse an Flip decks, and then of course, my very first World deck too. I can send you a photo if you like!

What keeps you motivated and coming back to it?

I don’t need any motivation at all. It’s my place to feel calm again. To feel safe and focused when the world is filled with noise and trouble. To me fingerboarding is also like playing piano or guitar, they are their to play and get lost in. And unlike many other hobbies or sports it’s always there. You don’t have to go anywhere, or dress up or, organising doing it with anyone.

Fingerboarding is a part of my home. i have my little room with my table and my ramps. And I go there and do it for 2 mins whilst the kettle boils, or i can go in for two hours and just lock in something beautiful.

Tell us about your current setup and your favorite tricks to do.

I have a Woodclub deck right now, with premium Woodclub trucks and wheels too. I LOVE IT. Its’s got huge tails and pops of the ground like a rocket. As I said, I love all the tailslides and noseslides tricks, so having something big kicks and the nose and tail makes those tricks far more reliable and solid to catch and slide in.

How would you describe the fingerboarding community from your own experience?

It’s so much bigger than I ever thought it to be, and reaches across the world. My work has always been pretty global and i’ve been lucky to see a lot fo the world and feel a part of communities and networks across lots of countries. I had NO IDEA that fingerboarding could offer me the same sense of closeness across the earth.

We know have a little group called The Island with about 25 guys in it at the moment. We all fingerboard mad, we’re all older and have kids, we’re trying our best to live out our best lives as skateboard lovers from the comfort and safety of our homes on a fingerboard.

How do you feel about the cost of fingerboarding products today?

I love woodwork, always have. I’m building lots of my own wooden ramps, boxes, and bigger parks too at the moment, and hopefully I’ll be sharing and selling those before too long as well.

I think fingerboarding is a great channel for the craft side of people’s character to come out. Creating ramps and obstacles is an amazing way to express yourself and your ideas about skateboarding and fingerboarding in a new way.

I believe that people who create and sell their crafts have the freedom to charge whatever they see fit. If you want to make a plywood deck with a hand-drawn design on the bottom and sell it for $100, go for it. If you want to stick two pieces of wood together, call it a grind box, and sell it for $8, go for it.

I think AI, 3D printing, and drop shipping present a threat to this. But from what I can see so far, the fingerboard community values craft, art, and hard work, and is ready to reward the right people for it.

Feel free to share any photos of your work or products that you’d like to include!